


bloody knuckles, healing hands

by spadesking



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, PTSD, Self-Harm, The last one not so much I think?, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, like it could be that he has PTSD but I did not write with that in mind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:48:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23795638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spadesking/pseuds/spadesking
Summary: They all cope differently. Wolffe knows that Rex always to the shooting range, or at least, somewhere where he can shoot mindlessly at a target. Cody makes his rounds with his men, checking in on them individually or seeing to the injured. Bly told Wolffe that he's taken to meditating recently, which Wolffe knows is because of General Secura.Wolffe hits things. Hard.
Relationships: Plo Koon/CC-3636 | Wolffe
Comments: 4
Kudos: 126





	bloody knuckles, healing hands

**Author's Note:**

> My intent in this is not that Wolffe's coping mechanism is always self-destructive or self-harmful, or that he is always self-destructive or self-harmful. However, the manner in which he copes with his grief is. Using a punching bag without hand wraps is never a good idea. The worst-case scenario is a hand fracture/break; best-case scenario you split the skin over your knuckles. Wolffe's physical pain is a distraction from the internal pain and grief he's experiencing, which is one reason why people do self-harm. The idea might be a little hard to wrap your head around: using more pain to distract yourself from more pain? Weird. But those who have experience with this topic might understand.

They are soldiers, but they are first most brothers. Doesn't matter what title they've got or what squadron they're from, they will always be there for each other, in more ways than one. The war is taking its toll from all of them, and as much as they can cope alone, doing it with others lightens the load.

Wolffe remembers when the 501st and 212th got back from Umbara. They all wore an identical haunted look on their faces that had nothing to do with their shared genealogy. Eventually, all of the clones knew what happened. It was if they all had been there, their strings pulled by a corrupted General and forced to do the unspeakable. It was worse than when Slick had knowingly spied on the Republic. He'd known what he was doing. These brothers hadn't.

When Wolffe, Cody, and Bly had walked into Rex's room with glasses and a bottle of cheap, burning alcohol, they didn't say a word. They didn't need to. The pain was already felt, the grief already shared. They barely drank anything that night, the bottle still three-quarters full by the time they left. That was alright. They hadn't meant to get drunk anyway. They all knew the alcohol wasn't the thing dulling the edges of General Krell and his betrayal. It was the sense of brotherhood they shared, the promise of staying together, grieving together. Perhaps even dying together. 

General Plo always talked about how the Force connected all living things, past and present, living and dead. Perhaps that was true, for the Jedi at least. Both the clones had their brothers. That was more real than any magic the Jedi had.

But they can only do so much for each other, spread across the galaxy with their own battles and Jedi to follow. Dealing with it after, days, perhaps weeks after the battle was lost (or won, but at such a high cost), is what they do, gathering in someone's room to pay respect to those lost. But dealing with it at the moment, hours after tragedy has struck, is always different for each clone. Wolffe knows that Rex always to the shooting range, or at least, somewhere where he can shoot mindlessly at a target. Said it was the only way to keep his mind off the battle and in the real world. Cody makes his rounds with his men, checking in on them individually or seeing to the injured. Bly told Wolffe that he's taken to meditating recently, which Wolffe knows is because of General Secura. He doesn't know how Bly does it, honestly, and Bly has admitted that he's not very good at it or does it often. But perhaps it's less about the meditation and more about the one who is teaching him to do it.

Wolffe hits things. Hard.

He never was one to talk things out. Why use words when his fists did all the talking for him? Didn't have to think, didn't have to think about all the men he'd lost, just hit the goddamn bag until his knuckles were bleeding and the pain was from his broken skin and the blood was no longer on the battlefield but on the punching bag. Until sweat dripped into his eyes and he could no longer see the faces of his brothers, armor blasted, and limbs in odd angles. There had once been a shiny lying face down on the ground, and all Wolffe could think about was the fact that he hadn't learned the man's name yet. 

Yes, hitting things was always so much easier than talking. Wolffe was never one to talk.

General Plo didn't understand that, at first. Perhaps it was the Jedi training. From Wolffe's knowledge, the Jedi believed that emotions clouded judgment, and keeping them inside let them fester like an old wound, ready to spread infection in the body. And since violence was definitely not the Jedi way, they released those emotions by just talking. And that was what the General had tried to do after a rescue mission had gone wrong, and they had lost the objective, had to hide out for nearly a week before an evac could come and get them. There had been an explosion that had collapsed mine tunnel they were hiding out in. Before Plo Koon had gotten them out, Wolffe had listened to the sound of his brothers, suffocating because of the rock lying on top of them. Their last breaths had been the last thing he'd heard before the General lifted the rock off of him. The moment he was free, he reached for his brothers, but the General kept him from moving by putting his hands on Wolffe's shoulders.

"Wolffe, don't move," Plo Koon said. "Ratchet is on his way."

"There's more," Wolffe rasped, his breaths coming shallow and raking the inside of his lungs like shards of glass. He pointed in the direction of where he'd heard his brothers dying. "General, you have to get to them."

Plo Koon's head turned towards a mass of rock in front of him. When he turned back to Wolffe, he could feel Plo Koon's claws tighten almost imperceptibly on his shoulders. "Wolffe, I'm sorry. They are with the Force now."

Wolffe tried to force the General's hands off of his shoulders, but pain shot through his shoulder. He gritted his teeth against the pain and growled, "You don't know that."

But he did. They both did.

After his surgery and two weeks of rest (Wolffe had insisted on just one, but then Ratchet had reminded him that though he could heal the Commander, he could easily keep him in the med bay as well), Wolffe stepped into the sparring room. At this late of an hour, there was no one there besides a small cleaning droid. One of the walls was lined with mirrors, and Wolffe stared at his face. _What a cruel fate,_ he thought, to look in the mirror and see the ghosts of his dead brothers.

He didn't wrap his hands before going at the punching bag, and he can't remember how long he'd been there until he saw the General in the reflection of the mirrors. He took a steadying breath and turned to look at the Jedi, discretely covering the sparse bloodstains on the punching bag from his hands. "Sir."

"Commander." Plo Koon was still in his normal Jedi robes. Wolffe wondered if he'd been awake the whole night or had just woken up. "Trouble sleeping, I see," he said, making his way closer to him.

"Could say the same for you, sir," Wolffe said. Plo Koon laughed quietly.

"I tried to meditate, to see if I could put my mind to ease before our day began. But it seems I was unfortunate in this endeavor." The General stopped moving towards Wolffe, his body stilling suddenly. He was looking down at Wolffe's hands, which were cracked and bleeding onto the mat. "You're hurt," Plo Koon said, his words clipped tightly at the ends, a strange thing compared to the smooth tone he usually used with Wolffe. 

_Fuck._ "It's nothing, sir," Wolffe said gruffly, pulling his hands behind him. The General said nothing, and Wolffe was grateful for that. "Just forgot my wraps."

For a moment, the General was quiet. Wolffe was sure that he could see through Wolffe's lie, but something he'd learned from the General was that he valued personal space with everyone. Plo Koon never overstepped his boundaries as a Jedi or as a General. He was kind, admirable, and respected. But he never pushed when Wolffe put up walls or looked like he wanted to say Plo Koon was an idiot.

He never did, until now.

"There are other ways to make it hurt less," Plo Koon said, his gaze never wavering from Wolffe. "Believe me, inflicting pain upon yourself as a punishment will not lessen the grief."

"I'm not punishing myself," Wolffe said curtly. "It's nothing."

"Grief is _not_ nothing, Commander," Plo Koon said. "Grief is an emotion, and emotions make you human. You have every right to grieve."

"I'm not—" Wolffe stopped himself. As much as he wanted to say that nothing was going on, that he wasn't grieving, he couldn't lie to himself. Lying to himself would get him killed in this war, in this position. Wolffe clenched his fists, and the dull ache of his knuckles flared brightly. "Then let me grieve. Let me do it my way."

"Your way," Plo Koon said, as he took a step toward Wolffe. In turn, Wolffe took a step away from Plo Koon and felt the punching bag against his back. He could easily escape, but Plo Koon's gaze pinned Wolffe to the floor as if the Jedi was holding him down with the Force. "Your way is destructive and painful. Pain does not remove pain. Nothing can do that. You may dull the edge of grief, Commander, in whatever way you see fit, but not at your expense. Not while I am your General, and you are my Commander." At this, Plo Koon reached behind Wolffe to pull his hands in his own. What he felt next was something akin to a spider walking across his hands. He looked down, but the Kel Dor's hands covered his own from his sight. When they pulled back, Wolffe's hands had healed. The only sign of the damage that had been there was the dried blood now flaking off his skin.

Plo Koon let out a soft breath, as if the process of healing his hands had exerted more energy than expected. "Wolffe." He lifted his head, and Wolffe could swear he could see the General's silver eyes staring straight through him, even without the Force to tell him. "I know I am not your brothers, and that you are unlikely to turn to me in times of grief." Plo Koon paused as if testing the next words in his mind before daring to speak them to fruition. "But should you want, should you need somewhere to turn. I will be there." 

There was a moment, as Plo let go of Wolffe's hands, where Wolffe thought he should say something. Something about the General's hands on his, the roughness of his skin that might have seemed strange or unnerving at some earlier time, now welcoming. He should've said _"Thank you, General, for healing up my cut up hands, even though you didn't have to, and it was my fault, my mess. But you did it anyway. So thanks._ " But he didn't. Wolffe could only nod once, staring into Plo Koon's eyes, trying to understand the man that was his Jedi, was his General, but now, something else.

Plo stepped backward, and the motion of him left Wolffe feeling cold as if the Kel Dor had been the only source of warmth in the room. _Say something, you idiot._ Wolffe took a deep breath. "How—" Plo Koon stopped, his head tilted to the side curiously. "How did you do that?" he asked, holding up one of his hands.

"Ah." Plo Koon put his hands together in front of him as he always did. "Force healing. I'm not very good at it, I'm afraid. I have not been able to master it like others."

Others. Wolffe wondered which Jedi could do that, and to what extent. Could come in handy in a tight place. He looked at the back of his hand and raised an eyebrow at the General. "Looks pretty good to me. Sir. 

Plo Koon's face shifted in the way that Wolffe knew it did when the man smiled. "Yes, I suppose it does," he said, with a slight hint of pride in his voice. His gaze moved to Wolffe's face. "I am sorry I could not do more for you, Commander," he said quietly. 

Wolffe shifted his gaze away, his face feeling warm all of a sudden. "You did plenty," he said. "Fixed my hands. Maybe you can get started on the other things."

"There is nothing about you that needs 'fixing,' Commander," Plo told him, his voice firm with conviction and belief. Wolffe looked back at him incredulously. "You are not broken, and do not ever think you are."

Wolffe felt his face getting warm again; it moved downward and into his chest as well. "Sir, yes, sir," he said.

The General smiled again. "Get some rest, Wolffe. I will see you on the bridge." Plo turned, and as Wolffe watched him walk out of the room, he saw the Jedi's hands squeeze into fists and then flex open. Like he was holding something, or yearning to hold them again.

Wolffe looked down at his hands. He could still feel the General's hands on his. 

**Author's Note:**

> Grief is always a heavy subject, and coping with it is always difficult as well. If you feel the need to talk to someone, either about self-harm or self-destructive behavior, I've included a link that provides hotlines on various topics. 
> 
> https://griefresourcenetwork.com/crisis-center/hotlines/


End file.
